Nearly 2 years ago, an individual described in UK security jargon as a “terrorist risk offender” (TRO) was released from Woodhill Prison, one of Britain’s high-security jails. For his part in a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange, he was originally given an “indeterminate sentence,” meaning he would only be released if he could demonstrate he had been rehabilitated. This was overturned on appeal, however, and he had served 8 years of a 16-year sentence when he was set free. As with all TROs, a number of conditions were applied to his release. He appeared to be showing signs of rehabilitation. While in prison, for example, he took part in a program called “Healthy Identity Intervention,” which is designed to rehabilitate extremist prisoners. After release, he attended another, called “Desistance and Disengagement.” Participation does not mean deep engagement, of course. And neither of these programs had been evaluated for effectiveness. A little over nine months ago, this apparent star of the TRO rehabilitation programs was at a conference for an organization devoted to the rehabilitation of offenders of all kinds. Shortly after lunch, he strapped knives to his hands and killed two of the people who had been supporting him. He wounded others before he was shot dead by police. A few months later, another TRO released on license was shot and killed by police after stabbing members of the public. Last week, Britain’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorist Legislation published a report on the way the UK manages the risks posed by TROs after they are released from prison. It revealed a flawed system. The early release of any prisoner, whatever their offense, is always a calculated risk. Peter Welby The report found the scheme that is used to evaluate the risk, known as ERG 22+, is compromised. Many assessors accept the offender’s characterization of the offense — and in some cases, even their denials of having committed any offense — when preparing their assessment of the risk they pose. The difficulties this creates for good risk assessment ought to have been flagged up a long time ago but apparently it is common, in part because the risk assessment is prepared by a psychologist in a therapeutic environment. This requires the offender to “buy in” to the process — which they might not do if their version of events is not accepted. The report also found that risk assessments take too much account of an offender’s good behavior in prison. This is another flawed metric, given that many extremists appeared to be model citizens before committing their offenses, successfully concealing their desire to kill people in the name of ideology. The scheme used to manage the threat posed by released terrorists in the UK is exactly the same as the scheme used to manage the risks from those convicted of violent or sexual offenses. The effectiveness of procedures used in both of those contexts has been subject to a great deal of study and criticism for a great number of years, but the same level of scrutiny has not yet been applied to how well they work with extremist offenders. The problem, in any case, is that extremism is complicated. There are myriad reasons why individuals get drawn into extremist behavior, including psychological factors, but there is one characteristic that marks out an extremist as different: They have subscribed to a way of viewing the world that puts them on the side of the good. Whether their extremism is fueled by far-right attitudes, environmentalism, animal rights or extremism, they consider their actions to be for the greater good. Even within the population of extremist offenders, the risks of reoffending vary dramatically depending on the type of offender and the individual in question. For example, a member of a terrorist group such as the IRA or ETA might have been considered to have a high risk of reoffending in the 1980s and 1990s, but a low risk now, given that the environment in which that form of political extremism existed has changed so much. In the aftermath of the November 2019 and February 2020 attacks in London, the CTC Sentinel, a monthly journal published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, featured a study on terrorist reengagement and recidivism in Belgium. It argued that the fear of re-offending by terrorists was much greater than the actual occurrence. It found that between 1990 and 2019, only 27 out of 557 convicted offenders returned to extremism. However, all of those who did were initially convicted before the global surge in popularity of Daesh among extremists in 2014. The issue here is that, just as with attempts to measure the efficacy of rehabilitation programs, not enough time has elapsed to draw conclusions about the risks posed by the post-2014 wave of extremists, anywhere in the world. Most have not been out of prison long enough, if they have been released at all. The early release of any prisoner, whatever their offense, is always a calculated risk. It is consistent with the needs of justice that these risks should be taken in circumstances where offenders have served their punishment and are deemed to have been rehabilitated. But when it comes to ideologically motivated offenses, we need a different way of calculating the ongoing risk posed by offenders, taking into account the fundamental reason why most commit their crimes in the first place: That they believe it is the right thing to do. Peter Welby is a consultant on religion and global affairs, specializing in the Arab world. Twitter: @pdcwelby Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view